Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895 to 1986), the Indian-born teacher who walked away from the role of world teacher prepared for him, taught that the self, the ‘me’, is built out of memory, thought and conditioning, that the observer who tries to change it is itself part of what is observed, and that no guru, method or authority, not even our own past experience, can free us. Therapeutic Shamanism shares his refusal of spiritual authority and his view of the everyday self as made of stories, but holds that this middle-world selfMiddle-world self. The everyday self (ego, persona, head-and-heart), made of our stories and experiences. A genuine and needed part of the Inner Tribe: of service, not in command. Read the full answer is real at its own level and that beneath it lie the Soul and the Spirit.
Who was Krishnamurti? #
He was born in Madanapalle in south India, probably in 1895. As a boy, in 1909, he was noticed at the Theosophical Society’s headquarters at Adyar by the Theosophist Charles Leadbeater, who came to believe him to be the vehicle for a coming World Teacher, and in 1911 the Society set up the Order of the Star in the East with him at its head. On 3 August 1929, at a camp at Ommen in the Netherlands, he dissolved the Order, saying that truth is a pathless land that cannot be approached by any path whatsoever. For the rest of his long life he travelled and spoke as an independent teacher, set up schools in India, England and California, and held a long series of dialogues with the physicist David Bohm. He died in Ojai, California, in 1986.1
What did Krishnamurti teach about the self? #
That the self is the past. The ‘me’ is put together from memory, from accumulated experience, knowledge and opinion, and from the conditioning of a whole culture: nationality, class, tradition, religion, language, education, family, propaganda, even the food we eat and the climate we live in. Knowledge about ourselves is always of the past, and a mind burdened with the past cannot meet life as it actually is, living and moving.2
His most radical step was to turn this on the one who tries to do something about it. We usually imagine a watcher inside us who can stand back, judge the rest and improve it. For Krishnamurti that watcher is just another image built by thought, so “the observer is the observed”; the higher self and the superior entity that are supposed to do the watching are, in his words, “merely inventions, further images”.3 What he pointed to instead was a complete attention, often called choiceless awareness, in which the observer, the thinker, the centre, the ‘me’, comes to an end. His best-known picture of it is a painter in ancient China who sat in front of a tree for as long as it took “until he was the tree”, not identifying with it, but with no space left between the observer and the observed.4
Why did he reject gurus and methods? #
Because he held that any authority, outside or inside, keeps the self in place. “There is no guide, no teacher, no authority. There is only you”, and with you your relationship with others and with the world, and nothing else besides. He refused to be anyone’s authority himself; each of us has to be our own teacher and our own disciple.5 He went further than most critics of religion by turning the same refusal on our own experience. What yesterday taught us becomes a new authority, and the authority of yesterday is as destructive as the authority of a thousand years.6 Systems and methods, on this view, only produce copying and conformity, and set up a new authority inside us. Truth has no path to it, because it is alive.7
How does Krishnamurti’s work connect with Therapeutic Shamanism? #
In three places. The first is his picture of the everyday self as something made. The middle-world self, the ego, is a collection of stories, personal, family and social, and nearly everything most people take to be their identity belongs to it. It was built mostly without our noticing, and holding onto it makes it feel all the more solid.8 Krishnamurti’s catalogue of conditioning describes the same building work. See What are Soul, Spirit, the middle-world self and the body?
The second is the refusal of spiritual authority. Shamanism requires no belief and no blindly accepting what anyone else says, including the person teaching it; whether something is true is found out by trying it.9 Beware of gurus, and do not hand your power away.10 See Is Therapeutic Shamanism a religion or belief system?
The third is his painter who became the tree. In a shamanic journey, the more someone can let go of their attachment to their middle-worldMiddle-world. Ordinary physical reality together with its energetic layers: the realm of individuality, separation and mixed intentions, and the only realm where harm is possible. “If there is a hell, then it is the middle-world.” Read the full answer identity, the more fully they can experience being something else, a Yew Tree, a Panther or one of the Stone People.11 This is the ground of shapeshifting and of coming to know the other Peoples from the inside. See What are hollowing-out and stalking our stories?
Where does Therapeutic Shamanism see things differently? #
On whether the self is only an illusion. Krishnamurti did not teach people to ignore the self; he asked for close attention to it. The caution here is about how teaching that the self is unreal can be taken up. In Therapeutic Shamanism the middle-world self is made of stories, but that does not make it unreal. On one level everything is one, part of Great SpiritGreat Mystery (Great Spirit). The unknowable from which everything comes. Better rendered ‘the Great Mystery’: animism has no interventionist creator-god, and the truly infinite cannot be prayed to, bargained with or journeyed to. More about this; on another level separation is real; both are true, and one does not cancel the other out. The ego does not go away by ignoring it or denying it. Denied, it goes into the Shadow, stronger and out of conscious control, which is why people who deny the reality of the ego often end up with one that seeks to dominate, a guru-complex.12 See Is animism the same as ‘all is one’? and What is ego death?
On the watcher. For Krishnamurti the observer is the observed, with no division between the one who watches and what is watched. Therapeutic Shamanism teaches a capacity to step back and watch the stories, the Aware SelfAware Self. The Witness: not a part of the self but a capacity for awareness, cultivated by hollowing-out, that can watch the flow of thoughts without being caught in them. More about this, and the practice of hollowing-outHollowing-out. The core, lifelong discipline of setting aside the middle-world self, its stories, agendas and preconceptions, so the Guides can work through us. The image: the shaman as hollow bone. Read the full answer that grows it; the teaching is that we are not the stories, but something else entirely. And it holds that we are many, not one: the Body and the middle-world self, the Soul of the Lower-WorldLower-World. The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in a journey is a reliable sign of not having reached it. Read the full answer and the Spirit of the Upper-WorldUpper-World. The realm of Father Sky and of Spirit: spacious, rarefied and clear, layered in tiers, offering not escape but perspective. Not better than the Lower-World: we ascend rooted, and bring the gifts back down. Read the full answer, each with its own needs.13 See What are the different parts of the self in Therapeutic Shamanism?
On methods. Krishnamurti saw any method as a new authority. Shamanism is a method, a practical path of journeying and practices, but one whose test is each person’s own experience, not a teacher’s word. And because a teaching about the ending of the self can be heard as permission to rise above ordinary life, Therapeutic Shamanism adds a point about balance. The middle-world self is reined in not only by rising towards Spirit but by descending and cultivating the Lower-World Soul, to rise, but rise rooted.14 See What is spiritual bypassing and how can psychotherapy help prevent it?
Did Krishnamurti found a movement? #
Not in the sense of a following, which is what he dissolved in 1929 and refused for the rest of his life. He did found schools, among them Rishi Valley in India, Brockwood Park in England and Oak Grove in California. From the late 1960s Krishnamurti Foundations were set up in India, the United States and England to look after his talks and writings and to run the schools, which they still do.15
